Mommy sits on the side of my bed. She’s wearing what she worked late wearing. She still has her leather jacket on. Her eyes look a little wet. You smell different, Mommy, I say. She smells her hands. Smells her shirt. What do I smell like? She looks to the door. Like she doesn’t want Daddo to hear. I sit up and smell her up close. You smell like another person. Mommy looks upset. Don’t say that, Bela. Why not? Because it’s not nice to tell someone they smell like someone else. I’m sorry. She doesn’t tell me not to be sorry. She just smells herself again. She takes off her jacket. Her back is to the closet. Shit, Mommy says. I fluff my pillow and lie down. In a minute she’ll think I’m falling asle ep. Sometimes Mommy and Daddo tell me things when they think I’m asle
Ep I stay quiet a couple minutes. I deserve this, Mommy says. I deserve to have my kid say I smell like someone else. I know she thinks I’m asle ep now. I breathe like I am. She’s facing my bedroom door. She doesn’t see my eyes open a little in the dark. What the hell am I doing? Mommy says. I have a family. Why would I risk this? She hiccups. I wanna laugh because a hiccup is a funny sound, but I don’t want her to know I’m awake. I don’t want Mommy to know I hear what she’s saying. Jesus, Mommy says. Jesus Christ. She closes her eyes and she breathes in really de ep and she smiles like she’s sad. Other Mommy st eps out of the open closet. She slides along the wall to where the two walls meet. Her head is up in the corner of the ceiling. I want to tell her to leave. I want to tell Mommy to leave. Your father is a good man, Mommy says. She’s crying a little. I know what Mommy and Daddo sound like when they cry because they both cried a lot when Pester died. Pester was our orange cat. He works hard for you and me just like I work hard for you and him.
But sometimes... Other Mommy blends into the dark corner. Mostly. Bela? Mommy asks. Are you awake? I don’t answer. I’m afraid to speak. If I do, will Other Mommy ask to go into my heart? There’s no rationalizing this, Mommy says. What am I doing... She only talks like this when Mommy and Daddo drink. Mommy must have been drinking while she worked late. She stands up and picks up her jacket and turns around suddenly and Other Mommy sinks de eper into the corner where the walls meet the ceiling. Mommy makes a little gasp sound. She isn’t facing me, so I can open my eyes wider and she won’t see. I watch her take a st ep closer to the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. She says, Is something up there? She walks to the dresser by the closet and puts her hand on the lamp like she’s gonna turn it on. But she doesn’t. Probably she doesn’t wanna wake me. She st eps closer to where the walls meet the ceiling. What did I just see? When Daddo speaks from the doorway, Mommy jumps. What’s up? Daddo says. Man, Mommy whispers. You scared me, Russ. Daddo looks to where she was looking. I close my eyes before he looks at me. Ready for bed? he asks her. Mommy doesn’t answer at first. I peek again and see she’s still looking where the walls meet the ceiling. She turns on the flashlight on her phone and points it up to the corner. What is it? Daddo asks. I don’t know. I just... I’m hungry, she says. I may eat something before bed. There are chicken wings in the fridge, Daddo says. That sounds good. Yes. How was Bela tonight? Great. Always. I peek. I see Mommy looking up at the corner still. She worked on that puzzle, Daddo says. I think she likes the challenge. What are you looking at? A spider? No, I... I don’t know. She lowers the light. I guess I felt like I was being watched. By a spider. No.
By me. Now they’re looking at each other. I’m not sure but I think Other Mommy is in the closet again. I used to think that’s where she lives. But one time when I asked her what would happen to me if I let her into my heart, she told me I would go where she comes from. We’d switch places, she said. I told her I didn’t want to be in the closet. She told me that’s not where she comes from. I love you, Urs, Daddo says. I know you do, Russ. I almost said yes to her once before. Daddo told me that people should say yes in life more often than they say no. He said that’s how adventures begin. The first time Other Mommy asked to go into my heart I really almost said yes. I didn’t wanna make her feel bad. I’d already seen her mad face. I worry that one day I’m going to say yes. Just because. One time I heard Daddo’s friend Mark at a party downstairs say that if you ask enough times for a favor, people “eventually say yes.” And Mommy said that you can only “tempt” someone for so long before they give in. Other Mommy is asking me for a favor. She says that’s what friends do. They give and take. They help each other carnation. But I don’t know what that means. I love this family, Mommy says. She has tears in her voice. Then Mommy and Daddo are leaving my bedroom together and I’m alone in the dark, and I’m looking at where the ceiling meets the walls. Hi, Other Mommy says. Her voice is right next to me. She’s almost too big for the space between my bed and the wall and she feels too close. I cry out. Mommy and Daddo come running back and they’re both in the doorway and I say, I almost rolled off my bed. They wait a second and then Daddo laughs. That’s not funny, Mommy says. Bela, be careful. O, come on, Daddo says. At some point in everyone’s life, they roll off the bed. It’s a rite of passage. Go back to sle ep, Mommy says. You won’t roll off. She looks to where the ceiling meets the walls again, but Other Mommy is crouched on the other side of my bed now. You good? Daddo says. Yeah, I say. Daddo sniffs the air.
What? Mommy asks him. Daddo thinks about it. I don’t know. Nothing. I ke ep getting a whiff of something. Like... a toilet pipe. A toilet pipe? What the hell? It’s gone, Daddo says. But whatever. If something’s wrong, we’ll fix it. He smiles at me. I can hear Other Mommy breathing on the other side of my bed. Good night, Bela, Mommy says. And do me a favor? What? Sle ep in the middle of the bed. Then they leave. And I think about how Other Mommy used to feel more like a friend. When I first met her, she was a friend. And I didn’t need any others! We laughed in my bedroom at nothing. She combed my hair. She covered my ears. She held me. Then she’d go back into the closet. And she’d stare at me for a long time from in there. She told me she was making sure I had good dreams. But I didn’t always have good dreams. Sometimes she didn’t talk. But I could hear her breathing. And sometimes I’d hear it again, while I was sle eping, her breathing, in the dreams I did have. And sometimes I woke up and saw her hurrying back into the closet. We were friends then. Are we still? Does she still want me to have good dreams? Ha! Daddo yells from up the hall. Something fell in their room. Daddo is laughing. Then Mommy is too. I told you it’s a rite of passage! Daddo says. I try to feel good about them laughing. I want them to laugh all the time. But I can hear Other Mommy breathing beside my bed. And I know she wants an answer. And if we used to be friends... what are we now? I sit up. I think about calling out to Mommy and Daddo again. Then I hear her sliding across the carpet. The closet doors slowly close and I don’t call out for Mommy or Daddo. Let them laugh, I say.
Please, let them laugh, all the time, like this. Forever.